Few people consider maternal traits when buying a new stock bull let alone look to breed a fertile, milky female, but it is a policy that is paying handsome dividends for Terrence Pye and his wife Jane from Middleton-on-Leven.

By breeding cattle for their maternal capabilities to include ease of calving, ability to thrive on forages, good feet and legs and a tight udder, not only have the Pyes who run the Rigel Salers herd, been able to reduce their costs of production, they also have a more uniform batch of calves, and, more to sell in the market place.

"The single biggest thing you can do to increase the performance of your suckler herd is improve the maternal characteristics of your breeding females," said Mr Pye, speaking at the British Cattle Breeding Conference.

"We all know bad calvings are not good for business and are bad for animal welfare. Easy calving is not talked about enough – it should be at the top of breeding objectives because cows do calve themselves, and, they calve twins themselves too."

He added that even a small assistance at calving is a loss because it affects the cow, the calf, the herd and the farmer.

"If you have a bad calving or get the vet, you are likely to have a weaker calf that is slower to suckle and get sufficient colostrum, and a cow or heifer that is more inclined to reject the calf and slower to get back in calf.

"The farmer then gets stressed having to assist the calf to suckle which can often lead to injury and in the worse case scenario death when intervening between cow and its new born calf.

"Herd health and management is also compromised as an animal that is slower to come back in heat disrupts calving periods which in turn adds yet more stress. Having to assist a cow at calving all costs money," he said.

The Pyes first looked at sourcing an easy calving cow some 30 years ago and now run a pedigree herd of 70 Salers. Such is their faith and reliance on the breed that over the past 21 years from 2002-2022, they have assisted in 17 of the 1581 cow calvings (1.1%) with just four of them requiring a vet of which one was for a caesarean. This was due to an aged cow prolapsing some weeks before she was due, and the vet being unable to get it stay back in.

Similarly, of the 288 heifer calvings during the 21 years, only four were assisted (1.4%) and without any veterinary assistance

And, the secret? Relying on the maternal characteristics of the Salers, which has one of the largest pelvic areas of all breeds. Up until 2015, all replacement heifers were pelvic scored using a pelvimeter, but now, all stock bulls are pelvic scored. All cows are also free of the myostatin gene as are stock bulls.

"Bull pelvic area is measured the same way as heifer pelvic area, and as pelvic area is a strongly heritable trait, for those breeding their own replacement heifers the use of a known large pelvic area bull will predictably increase the average pelvic area of his daughters," said Mr Pye.

For reference, the Salers bulls in the Rigel herd are all pelvic area measured by a vet, and average 200cm2 at 400 days.

The Pyes also select breeding bulls to use on replacement heifers with predicted low calf birth weights. They look for high accuracy EBV (>90%) and aim to source bulls from performance recorded herds, ideally where all/most animals are recorded.

"The undesirable factor of heavy birth weights and the desirable trait of strong growth rates normally go together, so this is a question of balance. If your females have large pelvic areas, then you can use bulls with heavier birth weights to obtain stronger growth rates.

"It is also helpful to weigh calves at birth to confirm that the sire EBV is a good predictor in your herd. For reference, with an average gestation of circa 283 days, the birth weights of Salers heifers are 32-36kg, and Salers bulls calves weighing 36-40kg.

He added that the nine known variants or mutations of the normal myostatin gene disadvantage the key maternal traits, to varying degrees, including reduced calving ease, reduced fertility, reduced milk and reduced ability to convert forage

For commercial suckler herds, to achieve the maximum advantage from using strongly muscled terminal sires with 1 or 2 copies of these variants, then the cows should be known to have 0 copies.

Striking this balance protects the benefits of having a milky easy calving fertile dam that can maximise (off grass) the growth and conformation of her calf.

While there are huge advantages to easy calving cows with such cattle boasting higher levels of fertility, longevity, productivity and efficiency, Mr Pye added that suckler farmers adopting such breeding policies would also reduce the 'carbon' per kg of beef produced from the industry.